Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Britain's leading opera director of his generation, known for vibrant, revelatory, inventive work that puts people in touch with themselves.
On the island
Eight records
Montserrat Caballé, Janet Baker and Richard Van Allan
I just think it's one of the most exquisite things that any human being has ever committed to paper.
My second choice is something to remind me when I'm on Island that I'm came from Scotland, and it's a Burns song, and it's sung by Eddie Reader when she was with our band Fairground Attraction because it's part of my youth
Von ewiger LiebeFavourite
My third track is A Lead by Brahms, who is not my favorite composer, but it is sung by one of my favourite singers and one of my best friends, the Mezzo Soprano Sarah Connolly
I chose an aria called Cara Spemi from Act One of Julio Chesery, but I didn't choose a recording by um anyone that has been in the production in that role, um I've chosen a recording by David Daniels
I think it's a very beautiful voice. I think it's Saul singing. And he's singing here an incredibly camp arrangement of Somewhere from Bernstein's West Side Story.
This is a track by Joni Mitchell who again is an artist that I've enjoyed listening to for most of my life.
I needed something from the Holy Grail of all musicals, probably the greatest piece of musical theatre ever written, which is Gypsy. And I chose Ethel Merman singing Rose's Turn.
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488
Mozart, being the first composer I ever fell in love with, won, and I chose piano concerto number twenty three.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:03Do you think our day-to-day lives militate against us being in touch with our true feelings?
Oh, yes, definitely. I think the grind of everyday life irons everything out, and I think … One of the things about the nature of a live performance is that it it can dredge things up inside people. It's certainly why I'm interested, why I work in live performance.
Presenter asks
3:05When did you experience opera for the first time?
I experienced opera for the first time watching um BBC Two … I think the f the first thing I saw was the Bergman movie of Magic Fluid. Although I didn't understand it was specifically opera I was watching, I just enjoyed it as a as a as a movie, as a as a piece of entertainment, as storytelling.
Presenter asks
5:51What were you getting from [Cosi Fan Tutte] at twelve?
Um it put me in a in a in a cocoon. It put me in a consoling bubble where I could be myself and explore my own thoughts and explore my own emotions away from the pressures of of what was going on um around in in um My Childhood Household.
The keepsakes
The book
William Makepeace Thackeray
My book would have to be my favourite novel, which is Thackeray's Vanity Fair which I've read fourteen times and never get bored of.
The luxury
a well-stocked bar with working fridges for mixing cocktails
Well, I'm imagining that my island is deserted because there's been a tsunami or something, but miraculously preserved is a well stocked bar where the fridges still work, so I can while away my time before I get rescued mixing cocktails.
Presenter asks
9:09Were you a fully paid up member of the awkward squad at school?
Yes. … I've always had a problem with authority figures. I really don't get on with them. And also I was being quite experimental in what I looked like then. … I wore a lot of makeup and a lot of nail varnish, I also was beginning to experiment with my sexuality because I knew. By then that I was definitely gay.
Presenter asks
16:41When did you know that you had a big fat hit on your hands [with Giulio Cesare]?
We knew something very special was happening by the stage rehearsals. We knew we had something very different and we knew it was reaching people in An unusual way. … William Chrissy got a standing ovation just for coming back into the pit. … And the third act was magical in terms of the silence and concentration when the singers were performing, and by the scale of the evasion when the singers were finished.
Presenter asks
21:04Can you explain to me what happened [when you were diagnosed as HIV positive]?
Ooh, well, I wasn't feeling very well during rehearsals and uh and then I started to feel very, very, very unwell at the second performance, and uh four days later I was I was in hospital. Simple as that.
“It's the ephemeral nature of live performance in the theatre that excites me and it's also the fact that it's a communal action that takes place between human beings and I find that very, very exciting.”
“In Glasgow, if you're a gay wee boy, you either um batten down the hatches or you get quite aggressive and upfront about it, and I chose to get aggressive and upfront about it, and uh everyone left me alone.”
“I think Andrew has literally saved my life, with his love, so It means a lot to me.”